Bidders will be "pleasantly surprised" by Bills' financials

When the process of bidding on the Buffalo Bills gets down to the nitty gritty, one sports business expert predicts there'll be roughly a dozen parties with serious interest and a "very healthy bidding" with the sale price ending up north of one billion dollars.

Daniel Kaplan of the Sports Business Journal was a guest on WGR on Tuesday and he added the financial shape of the Bills might surprise many people including potential bidders who are getting access to the team's numbers.

"From what I'm told, bidders are going to be pleasantly surprised with the financials of the Bills" Kaplan said. "Many see it as, financially, a bottom tier team. That's not the case, they're probably in the middle of the third quartile pack of the NFL."

Kaplan estimates the Bills are probably around 20th in the NFL when it comes to revenues although the majority of that money comes from national revenue which is shared equally by all 32 clubs.

"There's roughly a dozen teams in the NFL that do not bring in as much revenue as the Bills, mind you those are just revenue's, if you look at net income its probably very good for the Bills because they don't have any debt. So if you look at the Green Bay Packers, which are ninth in revenue's, they just reported 324 million, but their net income is 25 million. My expectation is that the Bills would actually have quite a bit more than that in net income."

As far as the bidding process, the trust has a fiduciary responsibility to make the most money for the estate on the sale of the franchise but Kaplan said sometimes the highest bidder doesn't necessarily win.

If the trust and Morgan Stanley, the investment bank overseeing the sale, don't think that party will gain approval from the NFL owners, a lower bid can be accepted. Kaplan added the investment bank can also go back to a preferred bidder and tell them 'here's what you have to do' in order to get more money from the sale.